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Summary
Summary
A biography of Linus Pauling, twice winner of the Noble Peace Prize, which looks at his award-winning achievements in chemistry, the controversy surrounding his second prize for campaigning and working against nuclear testing, his conflict with the State Department over security, and details of his marriage to Ava Helen.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Pauling (1901-1994) won fame for his pioneering and prolific studies concerning the natures of chemical bonds and structures, then for his activist leadership against atmospheric nuclear testing and the consequent McCarthyist inquisitions he weathered. In his later years, he was an advocate of ``orthomolecular'' medicine and a champion of megavitamin therapy. The first person ever to receive two unshared Nobel Prizes (Chemistry, 1954; Peace, 1963), he was a preeminent personality in mid 20th-century science and intellectual politics. This biography represents a novel collaboration by three generations of the Goertzel familyparents Mildred and Victor (psychologists and biographers), son Ted (professor of sociology at Rutgers) and grandson Ben (a cognitive scientist at the University of Western Australia). Although the biography was not authorized, the authors utilize unique interviews with Pauling and research spanning four decades; they achieve a coherent integration of descriptive biography, character study and history of scientific thought. The influential currents in Pauling's intellect, personality and politics are well characterized in this definitive work, which lay readers and scientists alike will find enlightening and rigorous. Illustrations. Library of Science alternate. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A comprehensive but simplistic biography of the scientist, activist, double Nobel laureate, and controversial public figure. Ted Goertzel (Sociology/Rutgers Univ.) enlisted the help of his son, a mathematician, to finish this biographical work begun by his parents, Mildred and Victor, in the 1960s. The completed biography of Pauling (1901-1994) begins with a heavy emphasis on the scientist's mother's insistence that he leave school to support his fatherless family. Pauling refused his mother's wishes and effectively turned his back on her, completing his Ph.D. and settling at Caltech with a bright young wife who was totally devoted to him and to his work. Having established this seminal example of Pauling's single-minded independence, the Goertzels then apply it to explain most of Pauling's achievements. They divide his life into three sections: his early, important work on molecular structure and the nature of the chemical bond; his passionate (many thought pro-Communist) activism for a nuclear test ban and world peace; and his strange obsession, in later life, with vitamin C as a panacea for almost any disease, especially cancer and the common cold. Pauling emerges as a brilliant interpreter of scientific data but a predictable political rhetorician. He was a tireless self-promoter, a narcissist who threatened legal action at the vaguest hint of slander but remained a vocal proponent of freedom of speech. Lawsuits involving former collaborators clouded the end of his life, and though he remained popular abroad, the American public began to brand him as a flake. An odd appendix offers Pauling's Rorschach protocol as the book's only attempt to explore the personality behind the public figure. A stiff homage to a man whose complexities are only obliquely suggested here: a lot of what and who, with a maddening lack of why. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Choice Review
This biography of Pauling (1901-94) is broad in scope and balanced in presentation and assessment. The research was carried out by three generations of the Goertzel family over a period of more than three decades. It is not an authorized biography, but Pauling was cooperative and reviewed some of the manuscript before his death. The principal authors, in the academic fields of sociology and cognitive science, discuss appreciatively and critically the major aspects of Pauling's life, career, accomplishments, and impact. These include childhood, education, marriage, family, scientific research in chemistry and molecular biology, political commitments, opposition to atmospheric nuclear testing, Nobel Prizes, and advocacy of vitamin C. The authors include an appendix that analyzes Rohrschach test responses of Pauling and concludes with the authors' overall appraisal of Pauling's personality. Ample notes and references enhance the value of the book. A related 90th birthday monograph is The Chemical Bond: Structure and Dynamics, ed. by Ahmed Zewail (CH, May'93). Recommended. All levels. A. Viste; Augustana College (SD)
Library Journal Review
Pauling's scientific career spanned nearly the entire 20th century, from his revolutionary Nobel Prize-winning theories on the chemical bond to his controversial work on orthomolecular medicine and vitamin therapy, which continued up to his death in 1994. To many, however, he is best remembered as an ardent peace activist and a crusader for human rights, which brought him his second Nobel. Throughout his career, he was called a genius, a visionary, a Communist, and even a crank. Nothing about Pauling was simple or obvious. For a biographer, writing the life story of so enigmatic a figure is a great challenge and requires an almost epic effort. Neither of these two new biographies is strictly authorized, although Pauling cooperated to some degree in the writing of each. Hager's massive work invokes the broadest context and best portrays Pauling as a man of insight and conscience and a major player in science, politics, and society throughout some extraordinary times. A journalist, Hager made extensive use of Pauling's official archives in the library at Oregon State University and also drew upon reams of other primary sources, including formerly classified materials from the FBI and State Department. Hager does a superior job of fleshing out the details of Pauling's influences and motivations. He also interprets freely, especially in sections describing Pauling's political convictions, and, while some historians might quibble with certain interpretations, Hager backs them up with reference to primary literature. By contrast, the Goertzels' rendering is more factual and straightforward, and it is probably less vulnerable to being criticized for subjectivity. Like Hager, however, the authors (Ted, the father, is a sociology professor; Ben is a lecturer in cognitive science) can be both laudatory and critical of Pauling. Their book's greatest virtue is the lucid and methodological way it expounds Pauling's science, compared with Hager's somewhat discursive technical passages. The Goertzels' work might be the better choice for pedagogical purposes, but, overall, Hager's is better for the majority of general and informed lay readers. Either book is better than Anthony Serafini's Linus Pauling: A Man and his Science (LJ 3/15/89. o.p.). Of the third of these new releases, Linus Pauling in His Own Words, Pauling wrote, "This book will take me as close to writing my memoirs or autobiography as I shall ever get." The editor was a lifelong associate of Pauling and an employee at his Institute for Science and Medicine; her selections, arranged in four chronological sections, are both forceful and enlightening and full of resonant quotes, and her transitional text makes for smooth reading. The tone is openly deferential to Pauling (the book is dedicated to him); accordingly, it might appeal to fans and admirers, but its academic usefulness is minimal. Being released in tandem with Hager's book, however, it might ride on the latter's coattails.Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. vii |
| Introduction | p. xiii |
| 1 End of Childhood, 1901-1913 | p. 1 |
| 2 Dropout of the Class of '17, 1913-1922 | p. 21 |
| 3 Hidden Patterns, 1922-1925 | p. 35 |
| 4 An Extraordinarily Productive Scientific Kopf, 1926-1935 | p. 61 |
| 5 Proteins, Politics, and Passports, 1935-1954 | p. 85 |
| 6 Fallout, 1954-1960 | p. 133 |
| 7 A Consistent Pro-Soviet Bias, 1960-1966 | p. 158 |
| 8 Orthomolecular Medicine, 1966-1990 | p. 192 |
| 9 Alone at Big Sur, 1991-1994 | p. 238 |
| Appendix: Patterns in Ink | p. 255 |
| Notes | p. 277 |
| Selected References | p. 283 |
| Index | p. 287 |